Volta New-York: List of events

Beside the main fair, a number of animations, events and talks are organized on the fair site or in cinemas of Manhattan. Here is a list of the “official” events:

Imperfect Articles
Imperfect Articles will be on site with their limited edition T-shirts with artwork by contemporary and emerging artists, such as Akroe, Anders Nilsen, Atsushi Kag, Carmen Price, Cody Hudson, David Shrigley. Davis/Langois, Eri Ito, Huskmitnavn, Hvass&Hannibal, Ian Pedigo, Joshua Abelow, Katherine Bernhardt, Matthew Feyld, Misaki Kawai, Rashid Johnson, Richard Colman, and UFEX as well as Italian artist Pesce Khete and Troels Carlsen from Denmark, both of whom are exhibiting at VOLTA NY.

Web site: imperfectarticles.com/

Colección Whitney

In the lobby will be Colección Whitney, a work by New York-based artist Trong Nguyen, a replica of the medieval discipline device of the stocks, used often in olden days of New York City to publicly punish criminals. In keeping with his practice, which often questions the power relationships between viewer and art object, here the Vietnamese artist aims to regain control of the act of looking by encouraging the visitor to spend time in the stocks. Both the object’s name and its given name (“stocks” and “Whitney”) also ask us to consider how the financial crisis, banks, or public and private collections, create a hierarchy of art objects and artists.

Web site: http://www.cameandwent.com/coleccion.html


Suck it ! by Sweet Tooth of the Tiger
Collaborative operation of Sweet Tooth of the Tiger with contemporary artist and pastry chef Tara Strickstein, presents Suck-it! In which sweets will be given out to visitors, artists and dealers. Highlighting the choreography and ceremonial nature of food exchange, Tara and experimental chef Adam Danforth, explore innovative flavor pairings combined with a unique sense of social ritual based in art theory and reflecting their individual studio practices. STT organizer, Tracy Candido, utilizes the public sphere as a place for eating, feeding, and talking with your mouth full and provides a "sugar high" that aims to engage active dialog and conversation.

Web site: http://www.sweettoothofthetiger.com/

A New Stance for Tomorrow

Amanda Coulson, director of VOLTA NY, the darling of the Armory Show satellite fairs,
has commissioned Natalie Kovacs and Victoria Brooks to create site-specific programming for the Tribeca Grand that explores an alternative position to VOLTA NY’s 2009 theme: ‘The Age of Anxiety’. The curators have combined their expertise to create a 3-part exhibition that references historical contexts while offering positive propositions for the future. Concentrating on alternative visions and innovations by artists, designers and filmmakers from the 1950s to now, A New Stance for Tomorrow includes screenings, site-specific design, sound art and performative installation with works by Byron Broadbent, Michel de Broin, Charles & Ray Eames, Tim Etchells, Noam Gonick & Luis Jacob, Claire Hooper, Pierre Joseph & Philippe Parreno, Yves Klein, Oswaldo Macia, Simon Martin, Mathieu Mercier, Alain Resnais, Pia Rönicke, Mika Taanila, and Andrea Zittel.

A New Stance for Tomorrow – Part 1 Cinema programme
The first major piece in A New Stance for Tomorrow will be a series of artists’ film and video screenings to be shown in the Grand Screen screening room at the Tribeca Grand Hotel – a chic art nouveau-style private cinema that hosts a diverse film programme throughout the year, including New York’s A-List Cinema Society film events. The screening programme will be split into two, conceptually focused around the films of Charles and Ray Eames from the 1950s and 1980s. Part 1 concentrates on imaginings and innovations in architecture and the built environment and will explore the relationship of these disciplines to how space is designated and inhabited. Part 2 will concentrate on imaginings and innovations in design, interiors and ways of living and will explore the relationship of these disciplines to how we interact and associate with design, both socially and functionally. The artists, designers and filmmakers included in these programmes in different ways dissolve the boundaries between art, architecture and design whilst creating experimental imaginings and explorations for positive propositions for the future.

A New Stance for Tomorrow – Part 2 Wildflowers of Manitoba mixed-media performative installation
The second major piece, hosted in The Tribeca Grand’s Sanctum, comprises an arresting mixed media work that incorporates film, performance and a domed installation by Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob. Wildflowers of Manitoba is both a utopian vision of an idealistic world and a model or vision of how things to come could be. Blurring fact and fiction they draw on varied historical references from the history of the hippy and radical fairy movements to Gay and Lesbian Culture providing an insight into other potential futures or possibilities.

A New Stance for Tomorrow – Part 3 Soundscape and installation at VOLTA NY 7W

A New Stance for Tomorrow continues in the elevators at 7W – the site of VOLTA NY, opposite the Empire State Building, with a series of artists’ audio projects. Here, Oswaldo Macia’s Tomorrow will be cloudy (2004-7) creates a soundscape that represents all the animals that boarded Noah’s Ark in early 17th century philosopher John Wilkins’ archive. It not only works as an analogy of the current climate crisis and the recent financial ‘crunch’ but also represents a journey into the past and future. Also in the elevators, artist, director and writer Tim Etchells, best known for his work as leader of the renowned performance ensemble, Forced Entertainment, will present Brief Reminder (2006). The declaration/warning is modelled on announcements in public spaces, reflecting the rules and systems in language and in culture and the way in which these systems are both productive and constraining.

Related Installation:
Byron Broadbent’s Cine-Pod – commissioned in response to the exhibition A New Stance for Tomorrow. The model, drawings and film present a future proposition for a new, mobile cinema structure that is at once sculptural and functional. Experimenting with new materials and technologies, the Cine-Pod is a solar-powered cinema made from ‘smart glass’ – a switchable material that transforms from translucent to opaque with the start and end of a screening.

Open Forum
Volta will share its talks programme “Open Forum” with the Armory Show; the one taking place at Volta’s location 7W 345th street is on Friday 5th at 5 p.m.

The Curated Art Fair: Trend or Necessity?
In recent years there has been a growing involvement of curators with art fairs, whether assuming posts as artistic directors, conceiving projects specifically created for a fair or acting as members of a selection committee. Are curatorial practices expanding more and more towards art fairs? If so, to what extent can we speak of a "curated art fair" and an "art fair curator"? Can a curator provide a new perspective or will the actual economical situation herald the retreat of the curator to less commercial spaces. The panel includes personalities who have bridged both worlds, such as a museum director who has worked with art fairs, a curator turned gallerist and an art critic turned art fair director.

Participants:
David Liss, Artistic Director Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA), Toronto
Louky Keisers, Director LMAK Projects, New York
Miguel Amado, Free-lance curator and art critic
Amanda Coulson, Executive Director VOLTA
Paco Barragán, Artistic Director CIRCA Puerto Rico and author “The Art Fair Age”